In the case of hospitals, sanatoria and other institutions for the accommodation of bed-ridden patients there has been an increased use of instruments for monitoring the patient's response to treatment and the diagnosis of his condition. Certain of such instruments are in the nature of electronic assemblies, e.g., for telemetering and are subjected to considerable handling and abuse, not only by members of the staff, but frequently by the patient. The equipment, as often as not, is unfamiliar to the patient and, since some of them resemble a standard cradle-type telephone, are often moved carelessly or dropped in handling.
Although adjustable brackets of the class here involved are known, none known to use have been conceived with the specific object of rigidly supporting the instrument while providing ready adjustability. Accordingly, our invention has these desiderata as principal objects.
A further object is the attainment of these objectives by means of a minimum number of inexpensive parts readily adapted to sterilization, re-finishing and freedom from complications.
Another object is to achieve an arrangement for the purposes stated from which springs, counterbalances and other biasing expedients have been eliminated to insure against a helpless patient being trapped between parts of the device and with consequent injury.
Another object resides in a construction for the several joints which provide adjustability which are themselves sturdily constructed in order to avoid looseness in one or more thereof which, if allowed to cumulate, would lead to intolerable alteration in a once-established position.